|
February 24, 2004
Educating Illegals Costs $900 per American Child
Because illegal aliens typically earn so much less
than natives, their economic contribution is
much less than their numbers would suggest— and
immigration enthusiasts incessantly claim.
But illegal aliens’ cost to the
American taxpayer is another matter. For example,
the children of illegal aliens are currently being
educated at
American taxpayer expense because of the Supreme
Court’s
disastrous 1982 Plyler vs. Doe decision. The
expense of this is high and disproportionate:
 | The U.S.-born children of illegals, technically
citizens by virtue of the current misinterpretation of
the
Fourteenth Amendment, could easily be twice that
number (my conservative estimate, based on the overall
ratio of children to immigrants—see
table.) That’s
another 2.2 million. |
| At $8,745 per pupil (the average annual cost of
K-12 public education in the U.S.) the cost of
educating illegals and their children comes to $29
billion ($8,745 times 3.3 million children). |
To put it another way, illegal aliens are imposing an
additional cost amounting to $900 per American child
(i.e. child of American-born parents) in the public
school system.
What about the total impact of immigration on
education? More than one in five K-12 students are
immigrants (legal or illegal) or the children of
immigrants. We know this thanks to the Current
Population Survey, a sort of mini-census taken each
month by the Census Bureau. The survey asks respondents
if they are immigrants and if their parents were
immigrants—legal
status unspecified—thus allowing us to isolate the
impact of immigration on school enrollment.
The
October 2001 Survey shows:
| 51.355 million children enrolled in K-12 |
| 2.299 million foreign born children enrolled in
K-12 |
| 10.596 million children of foreign born enrolled
in K-12 |
K-12 education now costs $415 billion, or 4% of GDP.
Based on the enrollment figures, immigrants must account
for at least one-fifth of this amount, or about $85
billion.
More importantly, immigration (legal and illegal) is
responsible for virtually all the recent growth
in school-age population. We can see this by comparing
the CPS reports for October 1998 and October 2001. In
that period:
| The total number of school age children enrolled
in K-12 grew by 621,000 |
| Foreign born children enrolled in K-12 grew by
96,000 |
| Children of foreign born enrolled in K-12 grew by
601,000 |
Four states—Florida,
California, Texas, and
Arizona—lead the nation in school-age population
growth. (See
tables.)
Big surprise: these states are all among the most
immigrant-impacted.
Just another example of the truth
enunciated years ago by Nobel Laureate economist
Milton Friedman: “It’s just obvious you can’t have
free immigration and a welfare [i.e.
transfer payment] state.”
[Number fans click
here for tables.]
Edwin S. Rubenstein (email
him) is President of
ESR Research
Economic Consultants in Indianapolis. |
|
